Friday, April 26, 2013 – Fernandina (Mile 717) to Cumberland Island (Mile 710):

Sunset at Fernandina Beach

            So we woke up this morning to – you guessed it – windy, windy, windy.  I have come to the conclusion that the wind is never going to stop.  Somehow I must have angered the wind gods, but I don’t know how, and we are just going to have to deal with the wind until we get home.

            During breakfast, we got out the charts, and the tide tables and figured out how and where we were going to get through the weekend.  We have to go through St. Andrew’s Sound at slack tide, so Bob decided that the best thing for us to do today was go to Cumberland Island (which we had kind of wanted to do in the first place).  So we packed up and headed out into the hurricane (oh…no…it just seems like a hurricane…)  I swear I don’t think I have ever seen so many continuously windy days in my life.

            We leave Florida behind and now we are in Georgia (I think it’s about mile 714) into Cumberland Sound where the first thing we see is the cruise ship, Independence, heading down Cumberland Sound to berth at Fernandina.  I have to be honest and say that I might have been a little jealous of the passengers who didn’t have to worry about winds and tides and currents, and charts and anchoring, and had someone to cook and take care of their every little desire.  Yeah, yeah, I know they aren’t having the adventure we are having.  I still might have been a little jealous. 

The "Independence" headed to Fernandina

We veer off and head up to the anchorage and carefully anchor in about 20’ of water in consideration of the sizeable tidal range.  It’s close to lunch time, and as we have lunch we decide whether to put the dinghy in the water and tour the island this afternoon or try and make reservations for the guided four-hour tour tomorrow.  Well, that resolved itself as when I called the reservations number I was told that the tours had been booked for months but if we wanted to come over tomorrow they would see if we could get on the tour if anyone didn’t show up who had a reservation.  We decided not to take the chance and we put the dinghy in the water.

Cumberland is a National Park, and I have copied this little excerpt from the Waterway Guide:

“Georgia’s largest and southernmost barrier island, Cumberland Island, at Mile 710, stretches 17.5 miles and contains more than 36,000 acres of habitat.

Cumberland Island was first inhabited by the Timucua Indians nearly 4,000 years ago.  The island was part of the Mocama missionary province of Spanish Florida during the 16^th century.  The majority of the Timucuans converted to Christianity and either perished from European disease or left once the Spanish departed the island.

In 1783, Nathaniel Greene, who earned fame as one of George Washington’s most successful officers during the Revolutionary War, purchased nearly 11,000 acres on Cumberland Island.  In 1803 Green’s widow Catherine built a large home on the land, which she called Dungeness.  The mansion burned to the ground mid-century.  In 1881, Thomas Carnegie, brother of steel magnate Andrew Carnegie, and his wife Lucy built another mansion named Dungeness on the foundation of the Greene estate.  Carnegie didn’t live to see the completion of the mansion, which stood until 1945, when it also burned.  Mrs. Carnegie commissioned several other mansions for her family, including Plum Orchard, a Georgian Revival-style mansion, which was donated to the National Park Foundation by Carnegie family members in 1971.

Today, Cumberland Island is composed of Great and Little Cumberland Islands.  There is no bridge to the island, and visitors come ashore via the Cumberland Ferry, usually from the town of St. Marys, GA.”

…or anchor out as we did and dinghy ashore.  You must bring your own food and beverages, and you must take your trash back with you.  There aren’t any “real” roads, i.e. paved, on the island, and everything you read says there are no “cars”, but that isn’t true.  We saw tons of cars, trucks, and ATVs.  If I lived there, a pony and pony cart would be great.  There are about 300 feral horses on the island and we saw several of them including foals.  The trails are peaceful and serene and out of the wind!  As we were walking along toward the ruins of Dungeness, Bob stopped and pointed out an armadillo rooting around on the trail ahead of us.  He was quite a character – not bothered by us at all, and I got so close to him I could have reached out and touched him – but I know better than to touch a wild animal! 

The mansion itself, even though it is a ruin, bespeaks of a time long ago when money was certainly no object.  As you walk around the grounds, which used to be surrounded by formal gardens, your imagination can run wild.  We walked about three miles from the Sea Camp Dock to the ruins and back again.  It felt good to get off the boat and out of the wind and actually have dirt under my feet.  This place was highly recommended, and it was really worth the effort to get here and walk around.  It was a great diversion, and I’m glad we took the time to tour this lovely island.

An armadillo on the trail

Dungeness

Typical view walking down the road

Feral horses and foal

As we walked back to our dinghy, we could see that the tide had gone out, and we had been smart to pay close attention to the water depth when we anchored because practically right next to our boat there appeared this very long wide sandbar when the tide went out!  We watched the tide come back in again and marveled at how fast the sandbar disappeared under water again.   You really do have to be very careful of the tides here.

Tomorrow we have to get up at O Dark Thirty to get across St. Andrew Sound at slack tide, which is the closest spot to the ocean that we have to get across.  Remember when I wrote about Bob telling me, “Well, we have to go out into the ocean”??  Well, this is where it is.  We are planning on anchoring in Wally’s Leg (I know – I wrote about that too – one can only use your imagination as to how it got that name).

We are trying to make tracks – if only the weather gods will cooperate!